Phantom
by Treat Lee
Summary: Hey guys! So I'm debating whether or not to write a multi-chapter Calzona story. I want to write about AZ's recovery in a way that really services her character, starting at the end of S8. I wrote this teaser for it, so if there's an nice response to it, I'll start it up! If not, I'll crawl back into my writer's hole and do something different :) Happy reading! Review review review
1. Preview

"Thanks for coming today Arizona. I know it means a lot to Callie for you to be here."

Arizona sits uncomfortably on the edge of the couch in her wife's therapist's office. She does not want to be here today. She only allowed herself to be dragged along after Callie literally begged her.

She's been great putting herself back together - well, not great, but she's managing. It's been hard. Really hard. How is she going to talk to a complete stranger about her life when she can only just now have a full conversation with Callie without any anger bubbling up?

Callie seems at ease here - she's sitting back on the couch, close enough to Arizona to touch her but respectfully keeping her distance at the same time. Arizona resents her for her tranquility. Her freedom. What Arizona wouldn't give to feel that way again, even if for a day.

Dr. Schmidt starts. "Arizona, something that Callie and I have been doing in her sessions is practicing vocalization. That is, feeling an emotion or a thought and then working out the best way to express it in a constructive way. I normally start patients out with vocalizing a memory."

"I'm not your patient," Arizona interjects.

"True, but you are an active participant in Callie's session today, and as an active participant, I'm going to ask you to do exactly that: participate."

Arizona glares at Dr. Schmidt. He's not letting her squirm away.

"Can you tell me about one of your favorite days?"

Arizona sighs, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms. So she's here, on the couch, but hell if she will be an active participant.

"I can, but I don't see the purpose." Arizona looks at Callie. Her wife's eyes beg her to comply with the doctor.

 _The Day Before_

 _Arizona and Callie rip around the living room of their apartment, cleaning up Sofia's toys. Along with the lasagnas and flowers they've received from distant family, friend and coworkers after Mark's death, an onslaught of toys for Sofia also made it's way into their now cramped apartment._

 _A stuffed giraffe in Callie's hand waves around wildly as she throws her hands up in the air._

 _"I don't understand why you won't come with me."_

 _Arizona tosses the cardboard building blocks into the bin a little more forcefully than necessary. "Uh, how about because it's not my appointment."_

 _"You knew that when I started seeing Dr. Schmidt I would want you to eventually come with me."_

 _"Honestly Callie, back when you started seeing Dr. Schmidt, I was so relieved to have you out of the house for an extra hour a day that I would have agreed to anything."_

 _Ouch._

 _Callie freezes in the living room. Arizona keeps her back to Callie and closes her eyes, knowing the bluntness of her words hit Callie like ton of bricks. Arguing with a loud Callie Torres for hours is one thing - driving her to silence is another._

 _"Calle. Please understand. I am performing my first surgery literally the next day. Do you think I need to be spending my time sitting on a couch talking about my feelings, or should I be reviewing the case of the 4 year old girl whose bowel I will be operating on?"_

 _"Arizona, we both know that you will not be reviewing the case because you can perform a bowel resection in your sleep. In actuality, you will be sitting on this couch. I'm asking you to come sit on another couch. With me. I really need to say some things to you."_

 _"Then say them."_

 _"Not like this. Not while we're at each other's throats cleaning up our daughter's grief toys."_

 _"Callie."_

 _"I need to know that you're hearing me when I talk to you. Please. Just once."_

 _"Okay. Just once."_

"Fine. Fine." Arizona looks to the ceiling, not daring to reach deep enough into her heart to risk any chance of saying something vulnerable. She just learned how to carry herself again. She's not willing to chance losing her small piece of mind to placate some man she doesn't even know, so she picks the first thing she thinks of. "The day I first knew I wanted to be a doctor."

"Tell me more."

Arizona stares down the therapist before continuing. "I was 11, and Tim was in the hospital for breaking his arm, again. My mom was fussing over him, which of course made me more nervous than I should have been. It was just a hairline break. One of the easiest ones to heal."

Arizona looks over to her personal ortho encyclopedia for confirmation. Callie nods her head.

"Anyway, my mom created such a sight that the orthopedic surgeon on call had to have a consult with her to calm her down."

Callie raises her eyebrows. "Your mom got the on call ortho surgeon to consult on a cast removal?"

Arizona nods her head. "Once you invoke the power of the United States Marine Corp, anything is possible. Trust me."

Dr. Schmidt chuckles softly. "I'd believe it."

"So the surgeon came in, right off a 10 hour emergency amputation for this guy in a skiing accident, and instead of being a giant grump like he was completely entitled to be, he was...magical. He reassured my mom. He made my brother laugh. He removed the cast himself, and he even let me help." Arizona lights up as she talks about Tim. "The first medical procedure I ever performed was on my brother. He just made me feel so safe, and I knew right then I wanted to give that feeling to other people when their kids were hurting."

"So it was an orthopedic surgeon who started it all."

Sparing a glance in her wife's direction, Arizona catches Callie beaming right at her.

"Yeah, it was."

Later that night

"Come here."

"Callie, no."

"Arizona, come here and let me talk to you."

"No! I'm upset and I want to pace but I can't pace because my freakin' leg hurts so much so I'm even more upset! Just leave me alone.

Callie stares at her wife hobbling around the room. She's come so far in the last months, both physically and mentally, all on her own. Just like she's always done. Callie forgets sometimes that underneath all of it, Arizona still needs help building her confidence up piece by piece, even if she would rather lose her other leg than admit to it.

"You never asked me what my favorite day was."

"What are you talking about?"

"That exercise today, with Dr. Schmidt. You never asked me what I talked about when he asked me about my favorite day."

"I'm a little preoccupied at the moment, Cal."

"Arizona."

"Fine Callie, what is your favorite day?"

"The first time I saw you holding our daughter."

Callie speaks quietly and firmly. Her eyes light up at the memory.

"With me being in the hospital for so long, I never got to watch you with her during those first weeks. I remember when we all came home for our first night in the apartment, and I went to help Mark put some of Sofia's things in his place. When I walked back in, you were rocking her before putting her down to sleep. Just...holding her."

Callie takes a step toward Arizona, and for the first time in a long time, Arizona doesn't automatically pull back.

"I'd been so afraid to let anyone else breathe on her, let alone touch her. Even with Mark I was hovering the whole time. But with you...I just watched you. Your hands were so strong and so steady."

Arizona hangs her head. Callie gathers Arizona's hands in her own, holding them close to her chest.

"Arizona, these are those same hands. These hands that have performed a million surgeries. They saved our baby."

"It still doesn't feel like they're the same." Her voice comes out in a small whimper.

"You lost a leg. I'm an orthopedic surgeon, and I still can't fully comprehend the loss you feel."

Arizona finally looks back up at her wife.

"But what I do know is that I trust these hands more than anything in my life. Tomorrow will be scary, and there may be road bumps in there, but it's you Arizona. You can do anything."

Arizona nods her head at Callie's praise. It's taken her a long time to even hear what her wife says, and an even longer time to start to trust her words again, but at this moment, she believes the sincerity in her wife's voice. She doesn't even question in.

She nods to their intertwined hands on Callie's chest. "If it's okay, I'd like to use these for something other than surgery right now."

Arizona leans forward, resting both hands on the sides of her wife's face, as Callie smiles into their kiss. There may be hope for them yet.


	2. Chapter 1: Things To Do

Calliope Torres is dead.

She's breathing, sure, and her heart is pumping blood. There's brain activity. Overall, her body seems to be functioning just fine.

But her wife is lost, presumed dead, and with that, Callie's life is gone.

She spent her entire childhood and a good portion of her early adulthood envisioning her husband. He would be tall, and brunette, and speak Spanish fluently. He would have a great job - one that gives him the same fulfillment Callie finds in healing bones - so that their professional careers would never be a source of resentment. They would live in a big house on the beach in Miami, where Callie would spend her time raising their children in the sun.

It was perfect.

Instead, Callie Torres finds herself in a cold hospital in the middle of Seattle, on a rainy day in May, wrapped up in a giant John Hopkins sweatshirt that smells distinctly of Arizona Robbins. She lays on the thin mattress in a PEDS on call room, watching her daughter sleep next to her. The baby's stomach rises and falls with her breath. In and out. In and out. At least one of them is peaceful.

If Callie can feel anything other than grief right now, it is her infinite gratefulness that Sofia is still too young to really register what is happening around her. She will not remember the specifics of her parents' deaths. With luck, she won't remember their funerals, or the cleaning out of Mark's apartment, or the empty months that will follow as Callie tries and fails over and over again to pack Arizona's clothes away.

She will be spared.

Still, in her heart, Callie can sense the little girl knows something is wrong. Mama won't stop crying and she hasn't seen Mommy or Daddy in what feels like forever. _It might stay forever,_ Callie realizes for the thousandth time during her personal four day tour of hell.

Callie can raise Sofia on her own. She's sure she can manage the logistics. Bailey raised her son essentially by herself for a while. It shouldn't be too hard.

What Callie isn't sure of is how she will manage to raise a child in a world where her wife doesn't exist. In a world without her eyes, and her smile, and her heart. In a world where she will never again laugh or sing or make stupid jokes. In a world where real, true love can be ripped away without any warning.

One of the best parts of the last month for the three parents was realizing that Sofia knows how to ask for each of them. For Callie, who feeds her more often than not, she lets out a blood curdling scream. For Mark, her playtime buddy, Sofia will pick up the stuffed bear that he bought for her the day she first opened her eyes in the NICU and start chewing on it. For Arizona, her protector as she falls asleep, she repeats the phrase "goo dra" over and over and over. It sounds like babble to anyone but Arizona, who always makes a point of reciting the beloved bedtime chant over her daughter's head each night as she rocks her daughter to sleep.

 _Bad dreams, bad dreams, go away._

 _Good dreams, good dreams here to stay._

If only.

Arizona Robbins is not tall. She is not brunette. The only words she can say in Spanish are _esposa_ ("wife") and _más fuerte_ ("harder") and _te quiero_ ("I love you").

But she is Callie Torres' whole world.

* * *

Arizona Robbins is dead.

Surely, she must be.

There are blinding lights everywhere, and the pain in her leg has gone numb, and she swears that Tim was just laying his head in her lap a second ago. Or was it Mark? Nick? Does it even make any difference? They'll all be in the same place soon enough.

Somewhere warm and bright and happy, where she can finally hold her long lost brother and hug her other recently-lost almost brother and push around her soon-to-be-lost, reluctantly accepted OTHER other brother.

Wow, even in death she rambles to herself. Callie would get a kick out of that.

Callie.

Sofia.

Mark.

How could he give up when he knows his daughter is at home, waiting for her daddy to come back? She actively dislikes a lot of things about Mark, true, but she always admired his heart. It was big and strong and prideful, like Callie's. It didn't bleed as openly as her wife's, but she could always see it beating fiercely just below the surface of his stupidly sculpted man chest. She knows that whatever is left it right now is beating for their daughter, struggling to survive, but it's not enough. It's not holding on strong enough. His lion heart is fading.

Arizona understands though. If it had been Callie bleeding out underneath the weight of the sinking metal ship; if it had been Arizona who held her hand and kissed her knuckles as she took her last breath; if it had been their love that went unpronounced and unchased and unfinished - Arizona would have given herself over to the other side too. The burden of love lost would have been too hard to carry, on top of the other dead people lying heavy in her heart.

But Callie isn't dead.

Callie is alive and breathing and waiting for her.

Arizona opens her eyes and looks into the unbearably bright light shining from above and for the first time in a long time, she sees her brother looking back. His ocean blue eyes stare right back at her own. Oh, what a relief it would be to get lost in those eyes - eyes that have cried alongside her and crinkled while laughing with her and, from the start of it all, matched her own. Eyes that she never thought she would see again.

In true Tim fashion, he tells her exactly what she needs to hear at the exact right moment.

He shakes his head, and she knows.

"Not yet, AZ."

Arizona closes her eyes, more bloodshot than her twin's, and steadies herself. She pushes back against the light, against the warm, against the sun. She focuses instead on a new pair of eyes, much darker and super sensual and just as easy to get lost in. Just as warm; just as safe. They're probably equally as bloodshot to her own right now. Bloodshot twins. Ha. Awesome. She'll have to remember to tell Callie that one.

It's not time yet.

Arizona Robbins has things to do.


	3. Chapter 2: The Sun

"Let me in."

"Torres."

"Let me IN."

"Callie, stop."

"Bailey, you let me in to see my wife right now, I swear to God!"

A frantic Callie Torres pushes up against Miranda Bailey, who manages against all physical odds to make herself a stone wall and hold them both back from entering the "Staff Only" hallway of Boise Hospital's ICU unit. That doesn't stop Callie, though. She's spent the last 2 hours in this waiting room, first waiting for the helicopter carrying her dying wife to land, and then waiting for them to load her into the hospital and assess her injuries. Callie has had enough. She has waited to see Arizona too long. The second Bailey loosens her grip on her arms, Callie throws herself through the double doors and lands on the cold floor.

Quick as a whistle, she is up and running again toward the end of the hallway. If she could just see Arizona herself, maybe check her stats and get a good preliminary look at her leg, she could start to breathe again. Maybe. It would certainly help the process.

Only a few steps away from Arizona's room, an arm reaches and stops Callie in her tracks. This arm is bigger and hairier and certainly much stronger than Bailey's. It does the job that Miranda's couldn't do.

"Ma'am, you can't go in there."

 _Can't go in there?_

That isn't an option.

Clearly this guy does not know who she is. Who they are. They are _Callie and Arizona_. You don't just keep them apart. If this man knew all that they had been through - everything that they had overcome to finally, truly be together - he wouldn't stop Callie. He would never dare...and yet, no matter how long or hard Callie struggles against his grasp, it doesn't loosen.

She is stuck in limbo, between the horror of Arizona being lost in the woods forever and the bliss of Arizona laying right beside her, tucked into her strong tan arms in Callie's protection.

This man is keeping her in limbo.

She hates him.

In her struggle, Callie gets a glimpse of the ICU room over his shoulder. She can see more than a few doctors crowded around a gurney, working fast to hang fluids and plug tubes and wires into her wife. Too fast, Callie thinks. They'll miss something.

"Hey! Hey! Be careful! Be careful with her!" Callie screams to everyone.

Callie takes a good look at the man holding her back from her wife. It's the same nurse who wouldn't let her see Arizona as they unloaded them all from the helicopter. The disdain rolls off of her freely. She brings herself to her full height and chokes out her words through angry tears.

"Listen, I don't know you think you are, but I am an attending at one of the premier teaching hospitals in this country."

"That's all fine and great, but you're still not getting in."

"I am an orthopedic surgeon."

"And I'm sure you're a wonderful one at that."

"Her leg…"

"Is not the main concern right now."

"What the hell do you know!?" Callie pushes back against his chest, freeing herself. "You weren't out in the forest with her. You don't know!"

The nurse brings his voice down to a comforting whisper. "You're right. I don't know. Neither do you. I'm trying to make it so that the people in there," he nods his head towards Arizona's ICU room, "can figure it out."

He walks Callie back toward the two swinging doors, practically dragging her down the hallway. "Ma'am, I'm going to need you stay in the waiting room."

Callie's eyes remain glued on the stream of golden hair she can barely make out in the middle of the commotion in the room. "You tell them to be careful with her. Do you hear me?"

"I'll tell them." He places Callie against the wall outside of the doors. Awkwardly giving her shoulders a tap, he forces a smile and heads back down the hallway. Callie watches him run back toward her fading wife and wraps her arms around herself, sliding down the wall to the floor.

"Be careful with her."

With that final warning directed to no one in particular, Callie buries her head into her arms and starts to sob.

This is too much.

Four days spent thinking her wife, her Arizona, was gone forever, only to have her back within arm's reach without the ability to see her? To touch her? To reassure her that she would never let any tragedy ever seep into their lives again? It was all too much, and Callie can't do it anymore.

She wants to be a good man in a storm for her wife, just like Arizona has always been for her, but the winds are too strong. The tide is coming in too fast. It's tearing Callie apart at the seams.

"Callie."

Miranda Bailey is at her side on the floor. The taller woman shakes her head and buries her face deeper into her arms.

"Callie, look at me."

She is too lost.

"Callie Torres, listen to me. If you burn this place to the ground before they stabilize her, you'll never forgive yourself. Let the good people do their work. If God forbid something goes wrong, I will help you dismantle this hospital piece by piece. I promise you that. Right now, you have to let them work."

The only move Callie makes to show Miranda she heard her words is a slight nod of her head into her arms. Bailey, in true Bailey fashion, forges on. She closes her eyes and places her hand on Callie's forearm. Callie twitches at the touch.

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee."

Callie lifts her head. "Arizona isn't religious."

"This isn't for Arizona."

Bailey closes her eyes once again. "Blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus."

Callie leans her head up against the wall and refocuses on the ICU room where her wife lays fighting for her life. She gathers the splinters of remaining strength that she can muster and radiates them toward Arizona. She might not be adept at being Arizona's good man in a storm right now, but she can be Arizona's sun.

"Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen."


End file.
